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Lowering Wi-Fi Transmit Power in Android

For some reason my ASUS Transformer has it’s Wi-Fi transmitter running at 1.6 watts (32dBm). This increases power consumption and so shortens battery time.

The standard for most netbooks is 14dBm. The ASUS Transformer allows for the following values: 4dBM, 11dBm, 18dBm and 32dBm. Fortunately, there is a way to lower the power used by the Wi-Fi transmitter.

YOU NEED TO BE ROOTED and have some kind of terminal emulator

Simply download this file: iwconfig.tar (registration required!) and do the following from the terminal emulator

su

cd /mnt/sdcard/download — this assumes the download location of the file

tar –xf iwconfig.tar

mount –o rw,remount /system

cp iwconfig /system/xbin

chmod 755 /system/xbin/iwconfig

You can see the current value by running the following command:

iwconfig

You should see that the current, default value is 32dBm for the wi-fi transmitter. You can change the value by typing the following (for example):

iwconfig wlan0 tx 11dBm

You can also set this up in cron to always lower the setting on boot. Again, in terminal emulator:

crontab –e

In the editor (vi for me) that opens add a line that says:

@reboot /system/xbin/iwconfig wlan0 tx 11dBm

Save the file and reboot. After successfully rebooting, check the current value by running iwconfig again. It should show the value you used in crontab (11dBm in my case)

PROPS to woti23 on XDA for highlighting this. Links to posts: here and here